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29 March 2021
[clowes] Ghost World at 20: ‘In an era of teen comedies and American Pie, this was an antidote’ … Looking back at Terry Zwigoff’s movie of the comic. ‘Those contrasting viewpoints underline Ghost World’s complexity; everyone takes something different from it. For Douglas, it is principally about nonconformity. “In the end, even Seymour conforms,” she says. “When Enid goes in and he’s wearing the blue jeans that his new girlfriend purchased for him, it is this abandoning of everything they’ve made fun of.” Others see it as a film about boredom, or about being unwilling or unable to grow up, while some respond to the characters’ nostalgia for a time they haven’t lived through. Zwigoff had intended partly to critique consumerism: “I wanted to set the story against a background of the sweeping, bland, contrived monoculture of which mindless consumerism is, of course, a part.”’
4 June 2020
[comics] Why I Hate Christians. … I love a rant from Dan Clowes – here’s a complete set of original art pages from Eighball #11. 
20 January 2020
[comics] “I Feel Like Comics Needs Its Own Thing” … Daniel Clowes interview from 2014. ‘I’m doing The Complete Eightball right now, and I’m doing all these new images for it, for the covers and the slipcase and all that. And I’m trying to draw all these old characters for the first time since I originally drew them, some of them 20 or more years ago. And it’s funny, some of the ones that have this kind of real angular stiffness, I literally can’t draw it as stiffly as they originally looked, even though I’m trying to. I’m trying to recapture that feeling, and it’s just impossible. I’m much more relaxed and confident, and you can’t, like, summon a lack of confidence like that. I’ve been really trying to, like, listen to the same kind of music I used to listen to and really get in the same “headspace” as they would say, but it’s very difficult.’
4 September 2018
[comics] Ditkoesque – Dan Clowes on Steve Ditko … an unpublished strip from the New Yorker.
3 November 2017
[movies] 42 Facts Every “Ghost World” Fan Should Know … ’18. The studio wanted someone like Russell Crowe or Harrison Ford to play Seymour. 19. They also considered Nathan Lane for the role. 20. But Zwigoff always knew he wanted to cast Steve Buscemi in that role. “I had to call him and threaten to hang myself if he wouldn’t take the part,” he said.’
27 March 2017
[comics] Daniel Clowes: Trump’s America is like the cynical comics I drew back in the 90s … Daniel Clowes is not fond of Trump. ‘With a normal fiasco like George W Bush, I would just let it seep in and see what comes out. But this feels so different. It feels like an opportunity to do something at least personally cathartic, if not, you know, meaningful or that has some kind of density to it based on the craziness of what’s going on. I almost feel like I created the world we live in, back in my early comics. It really feels like the dopiest, most cynical comics I drew back in 1991 have just come to fruition. I don’t know where that leaves me.’
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26 October 2016
[comics] Remembering Jack Chick: how the Christian cartoonist changed comics … The Evangelical Christian cartoonist Jack Chick died on Sunday … Many underground and alternative comic artists admired him. In an interview last year, the cartoonist Daniel Clowes said that, as far as he was concerned, Chick deserved a place in the comics pantheon. “As a comics aficionado you don’t really think of those as being part of the official canon of effective comics,” he said. “And one day I sort of changed my mind on that. I thought, ‘These are really compelling and interesting and I’d rather read these than pretty much anything else published in 1985.’”
The revelation came after a Chick tracts bender, Clowes said: “[O]ne day I made a long trek out to a Christian bookstore in Queens where they had a rack where they sold them, and I bought every single one, which totaled I think $3. I think they were each 10 cents. And I went home and read them all in one sitting, and it was maybe the most devastating comics-reading experience I’ve ever had. I really felt like he’d almost won me over by the end. There’s really something to be said for that.”
10 February 2016
[comics] The Making of Daniel Clowes … a long, nicely-done profile of Dan Clowes … ‘Clowes quickly gained a reputation as the industry’s angry young man. Friends still talk about “the chip” — that weight on his shoulder from having worked so hard at a medium long associated with kids and misfits. “Oh, you mean the chip?” they’ll ask when questioned about how much he’s changed since those early days. Read enough of his works and you’ll see character after character with some version of the chip, from Enid Coleslaw to Wilson to the time traveler in Patience. “We often talked about Charles Schulz,” Clowes’s friend and fellow artist Richard Sala says. “When he was alive, he was the most famous and successful cartoonist ever, but he was still depressed. He still remembered every slight and every mean thing that anybody had ever said to him. And I think Dan related.”’
2 June 2015
[comics] Daniel Clowes Hasn’t Forgiven Shia LaBeouf … a recent interview with Dan Clowes … ‘Q: With the superhero-movie explosion in full force, what do you think Dan Pussey would be up to today? A: You know, it’s funny, ’cause in that one story I did, “The Death of Dan Pussey,” it takes him into the future, where comic books are completely forgotten. But you know what? He’d be king of the world right now. This is his era.’
16 April 2015
[comics] The Masterpiece That Helped Transform Comics and Culture – Books … Dan Clowes talks about Eightball At 25… ‘The funny thing about reading all my comics, but especially those old comics—which I usually avoid like the plague, but when I was putting this collection together, I went back and read every single issue—is that it’s really like a record of your life. Almost everything in the comic is based on something, a joke I had with one of my friends or a real-life experience, and all the characters are based vaguely on people I know… It all feels like reading a diary almost, even though it’s entirely fictional.’
23 February 2015
[comics] Dan Clowes Portrait by Drew Friedman … go look at this wonderfully done portrait of Clowes by another cartoonist.
18 October 2012
[comics] Dan Clowes inks Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko … ‘Every once and a while, here at danielclowes.com HQ, we’ll pull out unusual artifacts that were uncovered while rummaging through the artist’s archives (often to the discomfort of Mr. Clowes) to share with all.’
13 December 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes On Book Shops … Clowes on the cover of New Yorker.
27 October 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes interviewed by the Onion’s AV Club … ‘The Death-Ray really should have been a graphic novel to start. I have no idea why I did it as a saddle-stitched comic, other than I just couldn’t bear to stop Eightball somehow. It just seemed like, “How can I end Eightball?” I remember when the Hernandez brothers first ended Love And Rockets, thinking, “How could they do that? It’s the end of an era!” [Laughs.] So it was really more about that, not being able to move on. But it really makes no sense as a magazine, and it’s just so unavailable to so many people. I really want people to read the book, and bookstores never sold an issue of Eightball because nobody knew what it was.’
2 March 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes Has A Website?! … ‘This website has been authorized by Mr. Daniel Clowes.’ [via Forbidden Planet]
17 January 2011
[comics] Dan Clowes interviewed by Tom Spurgeon … ‘I can’t say that I would never do another comic and call it Eightball. I say there’s actually a very high probability that I would do that some day. Kind of for old time’s sake, or something. Or just to kind of rethink what a comic book means at some point. But right now it sure doesn’t feel like the thing to do. After David Boring I really should have stopped doing comic books. It made no sense to do Ice Haven and The Death-Ray as comic books. I was just so married to that format for so long, that I couldn’t have the first iterations of those work in anything but a comic book. In retrospect that seems crazy. To this day I can’t explain to people who aren’t enmeshed in the world of comics what The Death-Ray is.’
28 May 2010
[comics] Cartoonist Daniel Clowes celebrates Oakland with “Wilson” … an interview promoting his latest comic book … ‘Clowes, an illustrator for the “New Yorker,” is traditional in other ways, too. At a time when print is down and young cartoonists are turning to the Web, Clowes still draws everything by hand — “I’ll never type in a url to look at comics,” he says…’
27 May 2010
[comics] Fuck Yeah Daniel Clowes! … a tumblr on the genius that is Dan Clowes … 
8 March 2010
[comics] Wilson … Tom Spurgeon produces the first review of Wilson – Dan Clowes latest comic … ‘It’s Clowes being Clowes, and Wilson all by itself makes 2010 a pretty good year for comics no matter what happens from here on out.’
13 August 2009
[comics] Dan Clowes Interviewed … [via Waxy’s Links] CLOWES: There’s a book that came out more than ten years ago − a 50th-anniversary index of the members of the National Cartoonists Society. It’s a book of photos and short bios of hundreds of old-time American cartoonists, and for some reason a few “younger” − I was thirty-seven at the time − non-members, such as myself, were included.
There are dozens of photos of these old codgers smiling with these stupid grins on their faces. But you can see the sadness underneath. It’s such a grim document. My friend [and fellow cartoonist] Chris Ware told me he had to actually hide his copy of the book, because he can’t bear to look at it.
QUESTION: What did you both find grim about it?
CLOWES: All these lives spent behind the drawing board; decades on a daily strip that no one remembers.
26 July 2007
[comics] Simpsons create Episode for all you Comic Geeks — More on the Episode of the Simpsons with Alan Moore. ‘…the episode, “Husbands and Knives,” will air on October 7 and will feature not only [Alan] Moore, but two other big comic book names: Art Spiegelman (Maus, Maus II, In the Shadow of No Towers) and Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World, David Boring). The three men figure into a subplot centered on Comic Book Guy, who finds himself in direct competition with a new comic book shop called “Coolsville Comics & Toys,” run by a fella named Milo (Jack Black).’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
3 May 2006
[comics] But Is It Art? — interview with Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Clowes on Conceptual Art: ‘I don’t want to come off like one of those Republicans picking on the NEA, like, “Oh this guy pissed on a crucifix and called it art.” That’s not what this is about. But when I was in art school, people literally were bringing in the tampon in the teacup.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
1 May 2006
[comics] Daniel Clowes Talks Confidential — Clowes interviewed regarding Art School Confidential … ‘I figured we’d work on (Ghost World footage) a bit and be done in two weeks. Cut to a year later and we are still struggling and rearranging scenes and changing the music and doing all of these drastic and subtle things. It made me realize how fluid the medium of film was. You can change a film entirely — you can give the two different editors the same footage and they’ll make two entirely different films…. It got me excited about trying to figure out how to edit and change comics after the fact.’
26 September 2005
[comics] Daniel Clowes Interview — the interview is posted at Suicide Girls so NSFW … On David Boring: ‘I was kind of making fun of the fact that I was taking so long in between episodes. I had these absurd cliffhangers in between each episode. Like the first chapter ends with a bullet heading towards the reader. Then the next issue came out like eleven months later or something. It’s the world’s slowest bullet.’
11 August 2005
[comics] Interview with Dan Clowes — mainly covering his new film Art School Confidential … ‘I had a revelatory moment as a child when I was drawing Superman. He had that insignia on his chest, and I was studying it for hours (I think I was 4 or 5). I saw the negative shapes that define the S, but I didn’t get that it was a letter. I would draw those shapes over and over. Then one day I realized, “It’s an S!” It all fit together. “S for Superman, of course!”‘
1 August 2005
[comics] A Comic Book Hero — profile of Dan Clowes from the Guardian … ‘I would never trust anyone else to work with my artwork. I can’t relinquish absolute control. I have an OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder] thing about having drawn every single line in every one of my comics. The great appeal is to be able to say, I did this whole book all by myself. It’s a little module that I created.’
8 November 2004
[comic] Dan Clowes Switch Commercial — the creator of Ghost World did an unused commercial for Apple (directed by Errol Morris) … ‘It’s like a perfect robot pal.’
28 November 2002
[comics] Great Comic Panels #2, from Ghost World [Buy: UK | US] by Dan Clowes …
27 November 2002
[comics] Geek Poet — yet another interview with Dan Clowes … ‘One person unimpressed with Clowes’s celebrity is Enid Coleslaw, the caustic, adorable 18-year-old heroine of Ghost World. In the book — published as a piecework between 1993 and 1997, then in one volume in 1998 — Enid attends a signing given by Clowes in her local comic-book store. She imagines a rugged, hard-bitten Bogart type, but Clowes — self-deprecating to a fault — depicts himself as a shabby, leering loser, sitting alone in a corner.”There was ‘nobody” there and he was like this old “perv’,” Enid tells her best friend Rebecca later. However, it’s worth noting that her name is an anagram of her creator’s. Indeed, Clowes has said that Enid and Rebecca represent two sides of his own nature.’ [via Egon]
21 November 2002
[comics] Worth a Thousand Words — Salon on Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine … On Twentieth Century Eightball: ‘The best are easily as testily thoughtful and revealing as Clowes’ works of fiction. And if they aren’t concerned with creating sustained narrative story lines, taken together they do tell us a lot about character — though the character revealed most is Daniel Clowes (represented either as himself or via a “transparent stand-in” in roughly half of the pieces). In contrast to his graphic novels, these strips resemble a Clowes manifesto, or perhaps the notes scrawled by his psychoanalyst. (Said analyst would probably have much to say about “The Happy Fisherman,” about a guy who walks around with a frozen fish stuck to his dick, “Ink Studs,” in which a penis serves as a paintbrush, and “Needledick, the Bug Fucker,” which is exactly what it sounds like.)’ [via Boing Boing]
20 September 2000
[comics] Fantagraphics presents a Ghost World Gallery. ‘Fuck you bitch… THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!!’ [ Related Links: Dan Clowes]
20 July 2000
 [film] UpcomingMovies.com covers Ghost World. ‘Clowes said the film is about, “the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish.”‘
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